Nobel Winner Says Internet Might Have Stopped Hitler 290
There can be little doubt that the internet has changed everyday life for the better, but Nobel literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has upped the ante by saying an earlier introduction of information technology could even have prevented World War II. "Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded — ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day," he said. I have to agree with him. If England had been able to send a "Stop Hitler Now!" petition to 10 friendly countries, those countries could have each sent it to 10 more friendly countries before the invasion of Poland, and one of history's greatest tragedies might have been averted.
The Importance of the Minds of a General Populace (Score:5, Interesting)
Take for instance Mark Twain & King Leopold of Belgium destroying the Congo Basin. Mark joined a group and tried to just inform people of what was going on. He wrote a pamphlet King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule [google.com] in which a monologue dripping in satire of the King defending himself was designed to inform not only Americans but by and large his own people--who were unaware of the campaigns as they never saw the money. Were it not for a few brave people that could not be bribed, that information might never have gotten out! And think how easily this pamphlet might have been distributed across the internet!
And yet today, the campaigns were run so well that we don't know for sure how many millions were killed or had limbs hacked off and I don't recall it being mentioned in my primary or secondary school history books. Left largely unknown to me until relatively recently--much like the Philippine/American War [wikipedia.org] & Iran/Iraq War [wikipedia.org].
To say the internet may have stopped Hitler may very well be an understatement. A Russian classmate of mine informed me that in some Eastern European countries, there are memorials for German soldiers who fought and died against the Russians. "But I thought they were Nazis!" I remember saying. And he laughed and asked me if I really thought that tens of millions of soldiers--some with Jewish friends/relatives--were really all killing Jews or knew of the extent of the camps. He told me that some soldiers had convinced the local people they were intending on liberating areas from Russian threat. What followed certainly did seem like a Russian threat
So I am in no doubt the internet--an advanced dissemination of information--at anytime of war would help people collectively discuss and understand and do the right thing. I only wish I could have written a review of Mein Kampf for Germans to read before so many of them bought into it
Hitler modded -1 Troll (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, that would have stopped him and all his fanatical support.
He is wrong, of course. If he was right, the Neo-Nazis and other such groups would also die under the heat lamp of the internet... the Scientologists would fail to gain traction and influence as well.
I think the influence of the internet is over-estimated by this guy. Give me the nobel money... let'm keep his medal.
Re:wha? (Score:5, Interesting)
It can! Think about it, Hitler was an artist first, got stymied in that (due to lack of talent). The genocide and warmongering came afterwards. If the internet had been around, he would have been able to get his art published online and his art degree from university of phoenix. Even if he still got rejected from art, he may have set up an emo myspace page, an antisemitic/ conspiracy theory blog, and troll on /., and that would be as far as it got. In other words, if he had an outlet for his crap, he might never have gotten around to taking control of the government and the holocaust.
The internet: great at distracting would-be dictators with pr0n, lolcatz, and angry blog posts.
Re:Treaty of Versailles (Score:3, Interesting)
You won't find that in the history books
I found those in my history books and my history teacher made sure to mention it specifically. I even grew up in one of the most conservative counties in the US.
Re:wha? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course like we all know what went wrong in world-war 2 was a single man. How realistic does that sound.
We all know what the problem was, what caused world-war 2 : an ideology. There are however 2 problems many people have with that : ... now the effects are known ... not so much)
1) it is the very basis of progressive ideology that "all ideologies are equal" (of course except anything that's not currently identified as "progressive". Example : eugenics was very progressive in the 1930's
2) the name of that ideology of hitler was national socialism. Of course progressive ideology is socialist.
I personally think we're not just going to see just how wrong this claim is. That the internet not only does not prevent racist and abusive ideologies from spreading, but that the internet can actually make ideologies spread faster, hit harder and with less that can be done to stop it. Also the internet makes sure that the size of an ideology does not have to be that big anymore for it to do real damage : having few members does not prevent communication like it did in the 1930's.
We will see that more ideologies, instead of just islam, will find the means of terrorism. They see the success terror can give an ideology, and some people will stop at nothing to push their ideas on others. The internet empowers these people, it does not weaken them.
Re:The Importance of the Minds of a General Popula (Score:5, Interesting)
Two points to consider:
1) Hitler actively embraced the newly emerging mass media technology called television. He also loved to make radio speeches.
2) Hitler was effectively elected dictator.
Hitler gained power through brilliantly capitalizing on the fear and discontent of inter-war Germans. He did that by USING mass media. If anything, the Internet probably would have helped him get his message out even more effectively.
Would it have slowed him down after he gained power, started the war and started doing the really nasty stuff? Probably not. You don't think Hitler was going to post on his blog about his death camps, do you? Or let any other eye-witnesses post on THEIR blogs?
Re:The Importance of the Minds of a General Popula (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Hitler actively embraced the newly emerging mass media technology called television. He also loved to make radio speeches.
And if you can't see the difference between a medium that lets a central authority send out messages and one that lets everyone else send messages, you missed the point of the internet.
The only question that remains is if the modern internet existed at the time of hitler, would it have stopped him, or would he have managed to filter and censor it.
"the great firewall of Germany"
Naive rubbish. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hitler was Avantgarde. He and his marketing-message of merging socialisim and nationalisim was super-hip back in the day. And don't dare think for a moment that it only was hip with the Germans, no Sir. Aside from a sophisicated marketing machinery he was a breathtakingly unscrupulous dictator. He killed off the entire SA leader-cadre right after scoring the Machtübernahme. EVERYBODY knew he did it and ALL were scared shittless to even say 'Peep'.
Goebbels would've built broadband to every home and casted speeches of the Führer to every household and make the web a cornerstone of some Kraft durch Freude programm and at least 50% of the people would've loved him for it. And the rest of the world would've admired the Germans.
No, folks, Hilter, Himmler, Bormann and the Nazis were a very special type of evil people and they were outstandingly good it. Bin Laden, Ayatolla Comeni and Co. look like orphans compared. I have no doubt they would've use the Internet to their advantage and excelled at it.
Think todays Republic China or a healthy version of North Korea with the brakes removed and fueled by a nation of well educated people known for their drive towards technical perfection in most aspects of life - very much as the Germans are generally percieved - and you get the picture of what the Nazi Regime was made of. If anything, something like the internet would've fueled their agenda. I have little doubt in that.
Re:The Importance of the Minds of a General Popula (Score:5, Interesting)
OMFG, YES!
Thank you for this post. I'm a child of an American soldier and a German mother. My German relatives were good people in every sense of the word. Wouldn't hurt a fly - literally (my great grandmother would catch flies and put them outside rather than kill them. She would sneak food to a russian soldier captured in the town because she felt sorry for him, despite the risk of the crime of treason). My grandfather fought in WWII on the german side and had lots of stories to tell.
I asked them all about WWII when I was a child and they said that honestly few people really knew what was going on with the concentration camps and such. It was as much a surprise to them as it was to the world at large when the story unfolded. I spent quite a few years conflicted because I thought they must be lying, until I decided the evidence available to me first-hand was superior to the much larger pool of second-hand evidence (ie. the popular media). They really didn't know what was going on, because they were just ordinary people living their lives as best they could.
This is why things like Gitmo really bother me. I never really understood how Nazi Germany could come about until I was able to witness the GWB administration first-hand. Consider that in the modern age we probably know more about Gitmo than the German populace knew about concentration camps in their day. We have a "secret prison", yet it has persisted for years and nobody has managed to shut it down for the outrage that it is.
This story really makes me wonder what the world would be like right now if it were not for the internet. Maybe all those apocalyptic sci-fi stories I read as a child would have been more prophetic than we thought at the time ...
Re:wha? (Score:3, Interesting)
Example : eugenics was very progressive in the 1930's ... now the effects are known ... not so much)
I don't think most people really know what eugenics is, or the beliefs that are behind that sort of thinking... nor how close most people are today to being just as firmly believing in eugenics and it's backing ideologies.
Re:Godwin says... (Score:4, Interesting)
Godwin says, "Hitler Stops the Internet From Being Effective"
Well crap, how does that work in Soviet Russia?
Re:wha? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hitler was constantly trying to goad countries into war before his own imagined death, rushing Germany's military buildup forward without financial regard. It's really impossible to declare that the Internet could have "stopped Hitler" because his was the kind of personality that dictated such grand world plans. He had a future planned for the German people extending beyond his life.
The way he took control of his party and eventually his country might even have been empowered by the Internet. I suspect Hitler would have exploited such a communication medium. I think the Internet strengthens cults of personality as much as it exposes criticisms of them. To act like we're in such a great, enlightened time is silly. In my opinion, the Internet has made people even more gullible in many ways.
Re:what about darfur? (Score:4, Interesting)
And even if there was an internet in Darfur, it would have been shut down. In Ethiopia, the text messaging cell phone network was being so effective for protesters, that the government basically shut it down (that was over eight years ago, I don't know if it was ever turned back on). And we say that the internet can't be shut down, but if a government is really intent on shutting off electricity, barricading the roads, and bombing civilians, it's effectively shutting down the internet in at least the region it controls.
Now, would have that Nobel laureate been an historian, an engineer, an economist, or whatever, may be I would have taken him more seriously, but since he's just a Nobel poet with no other apparent expertise/experience on this subject, I think I'll just ignore him. Poets can say whatever they want. They're not required to make sense.
Re:The Importance of the Minds of a General Popula (Score:2, Interesting)